


You Could Draw Me To The Gallows

by azulaahai



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Historical AU, I have got to stop tagging this now, Life is great, Period Typical Attitudes, Regency Era AU, idk how to tag this I continue to be the most awkward ficwriter on earth, they're both a little clueless and cute, this is shitty but in a lovable way I hope, trololo a stupid one-shot I started for the jonsa historical event but didn't finish on time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 20:01:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15226806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azulaahai/pseuds/azulaahai
Summary: After having eloped from home with and subsequently been abandoned by wealthy heir Joffrey Baratheon, Sansa Stark refuses to come home. Having caused a scandal that is sure to prevent her from ever marrying, she is adamant not to bring further shame to the family name by returning to Winterfell. Until, that is, a visitor comes to her - Jon Snow, an old family friend, determined to bring Sansa with him back north. He has a solution to offer her - a proposal with the potential to change both of their lives.





	You Could Draw Me To The Gallows

**Author's Note:**

> A stupid one-shot I started for @jonsa-creatives historical event but didn’t finish on time, finished and posted it now since I haven’t written something longer for Jonsa for such a long time? This is mostly a bad Jane Austen impression since I finally read - and loved - Persuasion. Pardon all the awful historical inaccuracies and/or typos! 
> 
> Title comes from [this Dickens quote.](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/926692-you-know-what-i-am-going-to-say-i-love)

She gave a false name, of course, but it did not matter - the townsfolk had already begun to whisper. She'd been staying at one ragged inn after another, moving every few day to stay one step ahead of the rumors. It seemed, however, that she'd underestimated how fast word traveled - though a mere fortnight had passed, it seemed everyone had heard of Ned Stark's eldest daughter having run off with and been abandoned by Baratheon's heir.

 

Sansa had dyed her hair, let flaming auburn turn darkest brown, but it seemed some still recognized her, still knew of her shame and stupidity. Under the name of Alayne Stone, she went from village to village, hiding from view as best she could.

 

It would not last forever. Neither would her money. Baratheon had left her nothing, of course - Sansa could not even find the energy to be bitter anymore. She had what little she brought from home, that cursed night she'd gone off in the Baratheon carriage, thinking it would take her to the stars and beyond.

 

Oh, how silly she had been.

 

The thought of what she would do once the money was gone made a pit of dread open in Sansa's stomach. Her options were precious few, and Sansa found herself too terrified to weigh them properly. Of one thing, however, she was absolutely certain - she would not go home, even if her father surely would not turn her away. She'd brought enough shame upon her family's name as it was - raked it through the mud. In a single moment of folly, Sansa'd wounded Robb's future prospects, for certain, perhaps prevented Arya from ever making a benefitial match in marriage. Not that Arya would mind. A twist in Sansa's heart at the thought. She missed them all terribly.

 

But it was best for them all if she did not see them, never interacted with them again, Sansa told herself. Though in her heart she wondered if she herself could ever bare to see their faces, to look in their eyes and see what she'd done.

 

* * *

 

The worst part, though Sansa hated to admit it, was the loneliness. Not that Baratheon had provided much in the way of company, but with him there, she had not been so very bored. She'd read, attempted intellectual conversation that Joffrey failed to uphold, and he himself had had all sorts of ideas as to how to make time pass for them both.

 

Now that he was gone, having taken her future with him, she was left with an aching restlessness that was like to drive her mad. She found herself too distracted to read, too impatient to draw, and so she turned to walking, despite it meaning she would have to face the sometimes curious, sometimes flat out disapproving faces of villagers she met.

 

It was from one of these nervous, fast-paced walks of hers that she returned, on the day when everything was about to change.

 

* * *

 

It was in the entire atmosphere of the inn - something laid in the air, something shivering, expectant. Sansa glanced around suspiciously. She'd become increasingly anxious, after Joffrey's betrayal - increasingly frightened of the world.

 

But her eyes found no cause for alarm as they surveyed the room. The inn looked as she left it - small, crowded, not at all a place for a miss Stark of Winterfell. This was the dwellings of Alayne Stone, on her way to visit a fictional sick aunt in the Riverlands.

 

Having found no explanation for the peculiar sense of foreboding in the inn, Sansa was just about to walk up the stairs to quietly sneak back into her modest room when a servant emerged from the kitchens.

 

"Miss Stone?" the young girl called out in a knowing tone suggesting she knew just how false that name was. Sansa nodded nevertheless. She was not easily taunted, these days.

 

"You have a visitor. A gentleman, I should think! He's waiting in the sitting room for you."

 

Frozen, petrified, Sansa could feel herself paling. A gentleman calling on her?

 

Her first thought was - Joffrey. He must've come back for her. A chill crawled up her spine at that, but she quickly dismissed the thought. Joffrey had left, and he'd made clear it was for good.

 

But then, who had come?

 

"Did he give a name?"

 

"Yes, miss. Trouble is, I can't seem to remember it. Something short ... not Stone, of course, I mean, that's  _your_  name ..." the girl giggled. "Something like that, though. Salt? No, Snow! That's the name. Mr Snow."

 

* * *

 

Sansa stepped into the sitting room with the mind of someone facing their death sentence. Whatever Jon Snow had turned up here for, it could not be good.

 

Jon Snow had been part of her acquaintance since childhood, though Sansa had never quite taken to him. Her mother did not approve of Jon excessively spending time with the Starks as they grew older, due to his low birth. A few years back, at the brink of adulthood, Jon had unexpectedly acquired himself a smaller fortune due to an inheritance from a distant cousin. Sansa hadn't thought much of it at the time - he was still same old Jon to her, too brooding and serious to be of any interest to her.

 

Now, seeing him in the shaggy inn at which she'd taken residence, Sansa was surprised at the intensity and variety of her own emotions. She was surprised, of course, but more so she found that she was happy to see him, and that was enough to stun her - she was delirious, in fact, to see his familiarly set jaw, grey eyes she knew so well. He was dressed modestly, as always, but even so he stood out in the run-down sitting room. Jon Snow reminded Sansa so much of home she all of a sudden wanted to weep.

 

The other feelings she had upon viewing him were harder to interpret. There was a strange sort of grief for the past she had now tainted, and shame, vague and strong weighing her down, and something else, something almost longing, something that made her approach him faster, almost against her own will.

 

He stood from the sofa and Sansa halted. They stared at each other in awed silence for a moment.

 

"Miss Stark", he said.

 

"Sansa", she whispered, suddenly aching for someone to call her by that name. She'd been Alayne for so long now, it felt.

 

"Sansa", he obliged softly. "It really is you."

 

* * *

 

Sansa wasn't entirely sure what happened next, and if you'd asked her what they spoke of later, she would not have been able to tell you. Curtesies and inquiries filled conversation for a while - he brought detailed reports of her family's wellbeing, managing to without once mentioning  her elopement. Sansa couldn't adequately express her gratitude for that. 

She asked him how he'd found her. He admitted to having searched for ten days or so - almost since the day they'd first been sure that Baratheon had left her without intending to marry her. A quiet, seething rage radiated from Jon as he spoke of Baratheon. Sansa could not find it within her to think it improper. Finally, Jon'd heard of an Alayne Stone thought by locals to bear a striking resemblance to a miss Stark that had visited a year or so prior, and followed the trail, leading him to the run-down inn.

He'd been sent by her father, of course, though why Ned Stark would send a Snow to find her was beyond Sansa's understanding. When conversation inevitably turned to the big question - what would happen next, Sansa found herself almost panicking.

"I cannot go back home." Of this, she was certain - no matter how he tried to persuade her.

 

And did he try.

 

"Miss Stark", he'd start, time and time again.

 

"Sansa", she'd correct him through gritted teeth.

 

"Sansa, it is simply folly, to deny yourself the right to a future because of one past mistake, and one not entirely of your own making, either." Bitterness, was it, in his voice?

 

"It is not simply I who denies myself a future, as you so eloquently put it, mr Snow. Every single  wellborn northerner will deny me a future as well, should I come home. It would bring shame upon my family name, if it's possible to do so more than I have already done. I would be closed off from society for life, you know that as well as I. Don't you think I want to?" she breathed, and to her frustration she felt tears pricking. 

"Don't you think I want to go home? See the north again, apologise to my parents, hear Arya tease me to death? Of course I wish to go home, Jon Snow! But there's no future for me there, can you not see? I am a burden now. I will never marry and I -" A pause, to catch her breath and swallow to keep the tears at bay. In the sofa opposite her, Jon Snow had gone absolutely still. "If I am to be a burden, I will be mine own. Not my family's."

He did not reply, him turning away keeping her from reading his reaction. Silence fell again - not the awed silence of before, but a more bleak, sinister one. Sansa felt the room had gone cold.  _He remains quiet because he knows me to be correct._ The thought stung surprisingly much. How she longed to be wrong!

“Miss Stark”, he blurted out.

“ _Sansa_ ”, they both said in unison - Sansa correcting him at the same time Jon Snow corrected himself. Sansa stifled a smile at that.

It’d been a while since she smiled.

“I came here to offer a ... solution to the troubles you perhaps accurately appreciate.”

She interrupted him.

“There is no solution that will not end in the ruin of my family’s good name and the prospects of all my siblings, mr Snow, as you know very well. Yes, I suppose you know it better than most, the ... harshness of our social circle. How eager it can be to shun those deemed unworthy. No, there’s nothing that can be done for me, mr Snow, though words cannot describe how much I appreciate you trying.” It was true, her final statement, though the forwardness of it felt rather improper; Sansa felt herself blushing. She’d gone wild, unrefined, during her days on the run, it seemed.

“I beg your pardon, miss Stark, Sansa, but I believe you are mistaken. There is a way that you could return north with honor ... A way for you to come home.”

Sansa irritatedly felt her heart begin to beat faster, treacherous hope taking root in her stomach. A fool’s hope.

“What, mr Snow?” she breathed.

“A marriage.”

“... with  _whom_?” she spat out, forgetting courtesy all together as the situation, in her eyes, abandoned all attempts at reason.

“I understand it is far from what you might have wished for”, he quickly said, seeming jarred by her confusion, a bitterness sneaking into the grey of his eyes. “It is ... I would never dare to presume, of course, and naturally you have the utmost right and understandable cause to refuse ... I spoke to your father, as we heard of Baratheon’s betrayal ... it - my fortune is humble, of course, and my estate naught compared to Winterfell, yet you would live comfortably, close to home. We could discuss -”  
  


“Mr Snow”, she interjected his ramblings, shock having struck her to her core. “I do not think I grasp what you are saying -”

“I’m  _asking_ ”, he muttered. “Miss Stark, Sansa, I -  _Marry me_.”


End file.
